Having nothing to do with Wizball or Wizkid, the latter of which I remember as one of the truly surreal games of my formative years, Wizorb is an Arkanoid style game with NES-styled graphics and a basic JRPG backdrop. It’s been out on the indie segment of Xbox Live for a while, where I’ve played and enjoyed it, so I’m glad to see the PC release is happening sooner than I’d expected. November 7th to be precise, on Gamersgate. Paddle control should benefit from mouse control, although it could also make the game easier so hopefully there’ll be at least a basic tweak to ball speed. Trailer below, the graphics and music of which are either ‘charmingly retro’ or ‘a pungent throwback’.

I’m going to go with charmingly pungent. It’s not quite the Puzzle Quest of brick-breakers, with the RPG elements being mostly cosmetic, but bopping monsters with a ball is more fun than breaking bricks I say. It’s the Devil’s Crush of brick-breakers, how’s that? For me, having a quest and characters adds the carrot of a more meaningful structure to a genre which is usually lacking in that department. Some sort of tasty, tasty structural meta-carrot.

7th November for PC? Wohooo…. Finally! :)) In the meantime I highly recommend to check out the platformer Ninja Senki which is made by one of the developers behind Wizorb. (The game is totally free and pays massive tribute to the classic Mega Man series). Moreover he has also written this neat article called Delicious Block-Breaking Games which showcases good breakout games with fine pixel art.

If someone would re-make Wizball I could reminiscence the countless hours well-spent in my boyhood with painting all things grey with bright colours. Arkanoid is a bore-fest compared to flying a ball in grey scenery! What is wrong with all these indies not doing the right thing!

You mean like…… the fantastic 2007 remake programmed by Graham Goring,
with graphics by Trevor “Smila” Storey, music by Musician: Chris “Infamous” Nunn,
that’s available for free, with PC, Linux and Mac ports?

Man, Wizkid was awesome. Unfortunately you pretty much need to do everything exactly right in the right order to complete it, so you need a guide sitting by your side as you play it unless you want to spend 4 months going over and over and over it.